Friday, December 23, 2011

The Best of 2011

One of the many items [old and new] enjoyed and recommended by Burbank Public Library staff during 2011 for your consideration:

I don't think any other fiction that I read this year gave me as much pure page-turning enjoyment as the first two books in the Charlie Hardie series: Fun & Games, and Hell & Gone. Fast-paced, twisty, clever, violent, rough and tough--compulsive page-turning fun--author Duane Swiercyznski [yes I can spell that without checking these days] continues to build his reputation as one of our newest and most inventive criminal/thriller writers.

Fun & Games introduces us to Charlie Hardie, who is gliding through life as an expensive house-sitter for the rich and famous, trying to forget his past life as an ex-cop and the tragic loss of his partner by watching movies and getting drunk. His latest assignment goes immediately wrong when he meets a B-movie actress who rants about hit men who specialize in making deaths look like accidents. Unfortunately, her rant is the real deal. Hardie finds himself squared off against a small army of the most lethal men in the world: The Accident People.

Hell & Gone continues Charlie's battle with The Accident People, and finds Charlie the warden of a super-secret, secure prison where escape is not only impossible but fatal. Charlie is faced with another set of seemingly impossible obstacles and encounters as he battles guards and prisoners in an attempt to survive while discovering the truth.

If you want something audacious and original in the realm of suspense fiction, Duane Swierczynski is your man. I can't wait until the March 2012 release of the third Charlie Hardie book, Point & Shoot. I'll be there, and if you read him, you will too!

As one jacket blurb reads, "Duane Swierczynski puts the rest of the crime-writing world on notice. So learn to spell the last name. He's going to be around for awhile." (Laura Lippman )